Personally, given the strategies of the clans involved, I would expect the Lion to be on the high side of average for army size - they would be the benchmark, but seek to build a force superior to anything any single clan could field against them. (Whether they can succeed at this is another question.) The Crane, on the other hand, use court as a primary tactic - warfare for them largely consists of delaying actions until they can get the political concessions they need. Given their culture and strategy, I'd expect them to be on the low side in terms of troop numbers.

(The Crab are something of an anomaly here - they are organized around pretty much every function of their clan serving the military directly, and have a huge overall percentage of troops, but only a tiny fraction of these can be fielded at any given time because the Wall.)

Do the Owl have a family name at all yet? The Mantis lacked one for quite a while, after all that treason they did.

The Lion are very much on the upper end of militarization - most clans do not turn as much of their samurai and peasants into soldiers as that. But yes, the other clans' armies are much bigger than ours.

I like the idea of needing to build the Owl infrastructure and prestige from the ground up. I think it'll make for a very fun game.

Well, the Mantis kind of formed without official permission. Not an issue for these guys. There will be a family name, just haven't decided on it.

I wish I'd seen something about usage of peasants in the Masters of War book, because I imagine that the Lion use more of their peasants for war than anyone else, but they actually don't seem to use many of their samurai for it, according to Masters of War. I think the reason that Lion are considered to devote more samurai to their army than anyone else is due to them just having more samurai than anyone else. Only the Crab are even close, but many of their samurai are stuck on the wall, as Ephiral said.

Yeah, the Mantis were all kinds of dodgy, and even lost their family name the first time around. Let's not do that, okay?

So I'm definitely leaning towards a Matsu bushi in his early twenties, who volunteered for the new Clan for personal reasons. If he's going to learn the Owl school as he gains Insight Rank, that opens some interesting possibilities for how he combines his old and new techniques, and it means that two bushi won't be very similar even if they're going to the same school. Could be fun to run across a former Kakita in the dojo...

Speaking of multiple schools, I am working on a new advantage that I think adds interesting options for that.

Combine Styles: 10 points. If a character has at least one rank in two different non shugenja schools, a character may "skip" techniques to instead learn a higher technique, provided that technique is equal or lower in School Rank than the character is in Insight Rank. Skipped techniques may later be learned in place of higher ranks. For example, an Akodo Bushi 2, Kuni Witch Hunter 1 gains a new Rank and wants to learn the Rank 4 ability. Since the character would be Insight Rank 4, he could learn the Rank 4 ability of the Kuni Witch Hunter School. However, one of the benefits of the Rank 4 is an increase to the Rank 2 ability, which the character does not have, so that portion of the benefit does not apply. Should the char go back and learn the Rank 2 ability, then the bonus to it from Rank 4 is immediately applied. Note that this advantage does not affect how rank 1 in a new school is obtained). Note that the character may advance in either school, removing the limitation from Multiple Schools.

Room for either, really, though I am concerned that you haven't been involved in the world building we've been doing or answered the questions I asked when you first posted interest. Based on that, I'm not sure you are a good fit for this group.

That is fine, is it still OK to take the Hiruma scout school and have been brought into the clan?

I'm sorry with all the buzz what year are we playing in again? Is Lore Nezumi culture OK to take--for a Hiruma scout and are fingers if jade available as a item when taking equipment? Just wondering because I have a character in mind.